New Releases by James A. Connor

In a major biography of Blaise Pascal, James Connor explores both the intellectual giant whose theory of probability paved the way for modernity and the devout religious mystic who dared apply probability to faith.

Painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, 28 years after Michelangelo completed the glorious and hopeful ceiling, The Last Judgment is full of stark images depicting the End of Days. James Connor uses the famous fresco as the lens by which to view the end of the Renaissance, arguing that Michelangelo''s imagery and composition reflect the religious and political upheavals of the time. Combining his flair for storytelling with incisive historical analysis, Connor demonstrates how the Counter-Reformation arose from the ashes of Renaissance Italy, and how that sea change altered the course of Western history.

Set against the backdrop of the witchcraft trial of his mother, this lively biography of Johannes Kepler – ''the Protestant Galileo'' and 16th century mathematician and astronomer – reveals the surprisingly spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science. In the style of Dava Sobel''s Galileo''s Daughter, Connor''s book brings to life the tidal forces of Reformation, Counter–Reformation, and social upheaval. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, was persecuted for his support of the Copernican system. After a neighbour accused his mother of witchcraft, Kepler quit his post as the Imperial mathematician to defend her. James Connor tells Kepler''s story as a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey into the modern world through war and disease and terrible injustice, a journey reflected in the evolution of Kepler''s geometrical model of the cosmos into a musical model, harmony into greater harmony. The leitmotif of the witch trial adds a third dimension to Kepler''s biography by setting his personal life within his own times. The acts of this trial, including Kepler''s letters and the accounts of the witnesses, although published in their original German dialects, had never before been translated into English. Echoing some of Dava Sobel''s work for Galileo''s Daughter, Connor has translated the witch trial documents into English. With a great respect for the history of these times and the life of this man, Connor''s accessible story illuminates the life of Kepler, the man of science, but also Kepler, a man of uncommon faith and vision.

"In meditation the journey of an entire life will be manifest as a state of relaxation and a state of activity, forever a balancing act between sleeping and waking. In life, meditation will form a daily practice that will permeate all your actions until one day you will feel unspeakable joy while standing in line at the bank." --From the Prologue Twenty-five years ago, James Connor, a newly ordained Jesuit priest, was called in to console a couple whose baby had been killed in a freak accident. At a loss for words to explain this cruel blow and comfort the anguished parents, he began to question his faith, and eventually retreated to a lonely cabin in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, to try to reestablish his relationship to God. In this luminous memoir, Connor has found the words to describe the indescribable: his circuitous, sometimes faltering, always passionate journey into the heart of humanity, its darkness and its light. With stubborn curiosity, touching humility, and raucous imagination, Connor gropes for meaning in percolating coffee and washing dishes as well as in the rising sun; in the arrhythmic companionship, sick sense of humor, eager gossip, or drunken belligerence of his eccentric neighbors; with the native bats, loons, bears, salmon, and stars; and in the encroaching fire that''s been burning for months in the hills, no less than the piles of books he''s stacked around himself and the ancient traditions of Eastern and Western spirituality. Ultimately, Connor searches silence and solitude for a way to rekindle his faith, feeding his spirit with simple breath and contemplation, to find that just as the flame jumps up and consumes his grief, anger, shame, and other unwelcome, all-too-human intruders upon Nirvana, it throws into light the blessedness of ordinary things. The story of Connor''s lurching spiritual quest will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to climb to higher ground or been humbled by the challenges of meditation. The good-natured instruction woven seamlessly into his tale will introduce fellow seekers to the healing power of silence and encourage them to keep climbing.